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Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Baking Bonanza

Today was a "baking bonanza" day. I made a double batch of the whole wheat bread from Beth Holland's Bread For Life cookbook that I have been making weekly for our sandwich bread. I have been using white hard wheat and a double batch generally gives me 2 - 2.25# loaves and 3 - 1.5# loaves (12" and 8" pans accordingly).

This time I did it a little differently. I made a dozen 4 oz hamburger buns, pictured above. Next time I may make them 3 oz. It seems like an awful lot of bread to be eating at once. I make make them the same diameter but not as thick next time. Any input?

Here they are in a 9x13 pan, ready to rise. I used 1.5#, the same for a medium loaf of bread, as the recipe did not say. For the filling, I used about 1 cup of Sucanat, 1/2 cup of Honey and 1 cup of Turbinado. I find mixing natural sugars works better in most recipes. Then I melted two sticks of butter (1 cup) and 2 t of cinnamon. Chopped pecans were added on the bottom of the pan. These were actually sticky buns, not cinnamon rolls. The recipe would work for either, but you wouldn't need as much butter and sugar.

I spread about a third of the mix on the dough that was rolled out and the other 2/3 was on the bottom of the pan. I rolled the dough tightly and cut 14 1/2 rolls out using dental floss, which works like a charm! This is what they look like coming out of the oven. You can see why the Germans call them Schnecken! (Snails)

And this is the yummy result. I ate it this afternoon... you know the cook has to try out the experiments before letting others eat, right?! LOL

In addition to hamburger buns and sticky buns, I still had dough for a 12" loaf and an 8" loaf. Then there was exactly enough fresh ground flour to make Hubby his newly favorite cookies.

I can't believe it has been almost a month since I posted. I'll have to update with my bagel experiments soon!